What would you like to see on a team's YouTube channel?
 

Hey everyone, you probably don't know me and I most likely don't know you. I'm Loralyn from TnT 280 and head of Chairman's, photography, scouting, social networking, yadda yadda yadda. Anyway, what I wanted to talk about was the "social networking" part of that. You see, we've had a Twitter and YouTube account for awhile now, but nobody ever updated or used it. I've been working hard to improve our social networking and now I post new content onto our Twitter and new Facebook page as often as I can. I'm struggling with what to put onto the YouTube account, though, so I turned to Chief Delphi to help. What would you like to see / normally put on a robotics YouTube account? Impromptu vlogs by our team leaders? Weekly team updates? Tips on different things? Something else? Anything you can offer is immensely appreciated!

Re: What would you like to see on a team's YouTube channel?
 

Videos of robots or prototypes
People explaining technical details of what they're working on
Match videos

Re: What would you like to see on a team's YouTube channel?
 

Hi there!

Getting into the Social Media part of FIRST Robotics is super fun!

We upload tons of videos to our YouTube channel during build season. We try to mix in a student explaining the part being prototyped, improved, added, whatever and then just some shots of that part or mechanism working. Slap some music on there and you've got a pretty nice video. The editing takes under an hour with iMovie or MovieMaker.

Lots of other teams do it in many different ways though. Some teams never show off mechanisms and just do weekly updates like a news cast where people talk. Others do a voice over with videos playing of people working. Other teams, just upload short videos of their mechanisms with no editing.

Honestly, they're all good choices and I would strongly suggest you try as many as you can to see what fits your team best.

Any other questions, send us a tweet at @Team3313 on Twitter!!

Re: What would you like to see on a team's YouTube channel?
 

341 has a whole sub-team devoted to media so we do allot. Every year we create vlogs during and after build season. Normally we have a few students talk about the prototype or project they are currently working on. Lately we have been a little more cautious with what we post in our vlogs and what the team puts out but we still try to show basic concepts without showing every detail. We normally cover whats going on with the team in, whose working on what, what changes have been made, etc. During and after competition season we also do recaps. They are just videos often the same length as our vlogs that talk about what happened while we were there and how we did. We also have a Flickr page where we upload all of our photos. My favorite part of robotic teams' YouTube accounts are reveal videos. Unfortunately we weren't able to put one out last year but I highly suggest making one. People love seeing robots before competition and what everyone has been working on. Its also an opportunity to make your team look really good. My best advice is to think about your team's alumni that want to keep up with the team and want to know whats happening. If you think they would be interested in seeing it I would suggest making a video about it.

Check out our YouTube page if you want to get a more specific idea of what my team dose. http://www.youtube.com/user/daisy341

Re: What would you like to see on a team's YouTube channel?
 

Video documentation of the various final mechanism designs (including a brief discussion of motivation and/or subtleties not immediately apparent) that can be found on one channel would be really great for teams to look back on in future years when trying not to reinvent the wheel.

I know that 449 would really benefit from doing this, at any rate - our previous youtube videos of various mechanisms have been scattered all over the place and are very loosely structured.

Re: What would you like to see on a team's YouTube channel?
 

Thanks for all of the ideas so far! I really want to do a robot reveal video this year, which we've never done before. I'd also like to do the explaining of mechanisms videos, but it might not work out with my team. Vlogs seem like a good and relatively easy thing to do as well.

Re: What would you like to see on a team's YouTube channel?
 

Some vlog's of your team might be cool, too. Short updates/journals or something of the sort.

Re: What would you like to see on a team's YouTube channel?
 

Well, with over 1,000 videos on our YouTube account, we have a variety of content, but mostly match videos and GoPro compilations. However, we also have a collection of other interesting footage, such as vlog series we call "Pi-Tech Academy" where we show cool science experiments that students can do, as well as reveal videos, past Chairman's video and Animation Award submissions, and other cool unique tidbits we thought that we thought viewers would enjoy.